A Stranger in My Own Country (3 page)

I hardly need to relate my own catalogue of sins at such length, and in the pages that follow it will become clear how much I was loved, how fervently my work was encouraged and supported, and what joyous years I and my family experienced from 1933 onwards. I probably only need to mention that leading and ‘respected' Nazi newspapers and journals described me as ‘the poster-boy goy for all the Jews on the Kurfürstendamm', that they called me ‘the notorious pornographer', and right up until the end disputed my right to live and write in Germany.

From the other side of the fence it has been much held against me that I didn't draw the natural conclusions from these hostile attitudes towards me and leave Germany like the other émigrés. It's not that I was short of generous offers. Back in the days when Czechoslovakia was being occupied, I was invited to escape the impending war and travel with my family to a nearby country, where a comfortable home, excellent working conditions and a carefree life awaited me, and where I would have been naturalized overnight. And once again, even after everything I'd been through since '33, I said ‘No', once again, obstructed in my work, constantly under attack, treated as a
second-class citizen, menaced by the approaching shadow of a necessary war, I said ‘No', and chose rather to expose myself, my wife and my children to all the dangers than to leave the country of my birth; for I am a German, I say it today with pride and sorrow still, I love Germany, I would not want to live and work anywhere else in the world except Germany. I probably couldn't do it anywhere else. What kind of a German would I be if I had slunk away to a life of ease in my country's hour of affliction and ignominy? For I love this nation, which has given, and will continue to give, imperishable sounds to the world. Here songs are sung as in no other country upon earth; here in Germany were heard strains that will never be heard again if this nation perishes! So true, so forbearing, so steadfast, this nation – and so easily led astray! Because it is so trusting – it believes every charlatan who happens along.

And I'll say it here and not mince my words: it wasn't the Germans who did the most to pave the way for National Socialism, it was the French and the British.
²⁰
Since 1918 there have been many governments who were more than willing to cooperate – but they were never given a chance. It was repeatedly forgotten that they were not only the executors of measures forcibly imposed by foreign countries, but also the representatives of an impoverished and starving people, whom they loved! It is those others who have thrust us into the abyss, into the hell in which we are now living!

So yes, I have stayed, and many others with me. We have given each other courage, and we have made something of ourselves in Germany; let it be said without arrogance, in all modesty indeed, that we have remained the salt of the earth, and not everything has lost its savour. It was inevitable, of course, that people in my neighbourhood would realize that I was a black sheep, nobody in my house has ever said ‘Heil Hitler!', and in such matters the ears of people in Germany have become remarkably acute over the years. Many people have spoken to me very openly about their true feelings, and that has given me and them the strength to carry on and endure. We didn't do anything so preposterous as to hatch conspiracies or plot coups, which is what
people in other countries always expected of us, utterly failing to recognize the seriousness of our situation. We were not intent on committing suicide when our death would be of no use to anybody. But we were the salt of the earth – and if the salt has lost its savour, with what shall it be salted?

Although it doesn't actually belong here, I will tell a little story at this point that happened to me in the first years after the Nazis came to power, and which will perhaps give some idea of how the atmosphere in my house immediately encouraged those of like mind to emerge from the silence they so anxiously maintained the rest of the time. One day a repair man from Berlin called on us to fix some appliance or other. He was a real Berliner, quick on the uptake, and he had immediately grasped what kind of house this was. At the table – we always eat together – he loosened up more and more, finally regaling us with the following delightful and instructive story, from which one can see that in Germany, even in the worst of times, there were still (and there always will be) plenty of upright and unwavering men in every walk of life. Anyway, this repair man told us the following story in his strong Berlin accent: ‘So the doorbell rang, and when I opened up there was one of the Chancellor's tin-rattlers standing there with a list in his paw. “I'm from the WRO”,
²¹
says the man, “and we can't help noticing that you have never contributed to the great relief effort for the German nation. The Winter Relief Organization, that is . . .” And he reels off his spiel, and I let him rabbit on, and when he's finished I say to him: “Look mate,” I say, “you can save your breath because you're not getting anything out of me!”

“Well,” says he, “if you're still not going to give anything even after I've paid you a personal visit, then I'll have to put a circle after your name on my list of addresses, and that could have very unpleasant consequences for you.”

“Look mate,” I say again, “I don't give a monkey's what kind of geometric shapes you draw after my name, I'm still not going to give you anything!”

Now he tries a bit harder. “Look here,” he says, “don't be like that,
don't get yourself into trouble when there's no need! Just give me a fifty and I won't put a circle on the list – job done!”

“You think?” says I. “But a fifty, that's a whole loaf of bread, and a loaf of bread is a big thing for me: I've got five kids.”

“What!” says this fellow, all excited. “You've got five children? Then you're a man after our Führer's own heart!”

“Whatever,” says I, “but just so you know: we had all the children before your lot came to power!”

“You know what?” says he, “you'll never make a good National Socialist as long as you live!”

“You've got it, mate!” I reply. “I won't even make a bad National Socialist!”'

I must admit this little story made a lasting impression on me, and the line about not even making a bad Nazi proved very helpful to me in many of the situations I would find myself in during the times ahead.

If I ask myself today whether I did the right thing or the wrong thing by remaining in Germany, then I'd still have to say today: ‘I did the right thing.' I truthfully did not stay, as some have claimed, because I didn't want to lose my home and possessions or because I was a coward. If I'd gone abroad I could have earned more money, more easily, and would have lived a safer life. Here I have suffered all manner of trials and tribulations, I've spent many hours in the air-raid shelter in Berlin,
²²
watching the windows turn red, and often enough, to put it plainly, I've been scared witless. My property has been constantly at risk, for a year now they have refused to allocate paper for my books – and I am writing these lines in the shadow of the hangman's noose in the asylum at Strelitz, where the chief prosecutor has kindly placed me as a ‘dangerous lunatic', in September 1944. Every ten minutes or so a constable enters my cell, looks curiously at my scribblings, and asks me what I am writing. I say: ‘A children's story'
²³
and carry on writing. I prefer not to think about what will happen to me if anyone reads these lines. But I have to write them. I sense that the war is coming to an end soon, and I want to write down my experiences
before
that happens: hundreds of others will be doing the same after the war. Better to do
it now – even at the risk of my life. I'm living here with eighty-four men, most of them quite deranged, and nearly all of them convicted murderers, thieves or sex offenders. But even under these conditions I still say: ‘I was right to stay in Germany. I am a German, and I would rather perish with this unfortunate but blessed nation than enjoy a false happiness in some other country!'

Reverting now to Rowohlt and me and that time of innocence in January '33: yes, we were badly compromised, and sometimes we admitted as much to ourselves. But then we kept on reassuring ourselves with the fatuous observation: ‘It won't be that bad – at least, not for us.' We fluctuated wildly between utter recklessness and wary caution. Rowohlt had just told his wife the latest joke about G., only to turn on her angrily because she had told the same joke to my wife. Did she want to ruin them all? Did she want to land them all in a concentration camp? Was she completely mad, had she taken leave of her senses?! And then the very same Rowohlt went and pulled the following stunt. His wife was actually by far the more cautious of the two, and since she knew very well that they were not exactly renowned in the neighbourhood as a model Nazi household, she took great care to greet everyone she met with the proper Hitler salute and the words ‘Heil Hitler!' Trotting along beside her was her little daughter, who was probably four at the time
²⁴
and just called ‘Baby', who raised her arm in greeting just like her mother.

But her dear father, Rowohlt, who was always full of bright ideas and loved to play tricks on his wife, took Baby aside and trained her and drilled her, so that the next time her mother was out on the street with her, dutifully greeting everyone with ‘Heil Hitler!', Baby raised her left fist and yelled in her clear little voice: ‘Red Front! Blondi's a runt!' What tears and fits of despair the poor mother went through to get the child to unlearn this greeting, which really wasn't exactly in step with the times! But Rowohlt, the overanxious and cautious one, just laughed; his enjoyment of this excellent joke far outweighed any fear of the very real danger. Giving the ‘Red Front' salute meant being sent to a concentration camp at the very least – and probably much worse than that.

At other times Rowohlt would phone me in my little village, where the young postmistress, with too much time on her hands, was always very curious about the telephone calls of the ‘famous' local author, and he would greet me with a full-throated: ‘Hello, my friend! Heil Hitler!'

‘What's this, Rowohlt?' I would ask. ‘Have you joined the Party now, or what?'

‘What are you on about!' cried the incorrigible joker. ‘We're all brown at the arse end!'

That was Rowohlt for you, and basically he never changed. And I was the same, perhaps not quite so active or inventive, and certainly not as witty; but in those days I developed a dangerous penchant for little anecdotes and jokes poking fun at the Nazis, I stored them up in my mind, so to speak, and shared them readily with others – though I was often rather careless in my choice of listeners, especially if the anecdotes were particularly good and I was bursting to tell. This was bound to end badly, and end badly it very soon did. But before I tell the story of my first serious clash with the Nazi regime, I need to say a little more about the circumstances in which we were living at the time. As already stated, the success of
Little Man
came and went very quickly, I had spent the money none too wisely, and when my wife called a halt to my extravagance we had a little money left, but not very much. To ensure that what little we had left would not drain away too quickly, we decided to move out to the country, far removed from the temptations of bars, dance halls and cabarets. After looking around for a while we found a villa on the banks of the Spree in the little village of Berkenbrück; we rented the upstairs rooms and decided to use this as a temporary base, living here while we looked for a place of our own to buy further out from the city. Everything about the place seemed to suit us down to the ground. The villa lay at the far end of the village, overlooking the forest, one of a small number of townhouses that had been built on the outskirts of what was basically a rural farming village. The garden facing the road, which had hardly any passing traffic, was on the level, while round the back it sloped steeply down to the river, which here flowed past in a straight line between engineered banks.
There was an abundance of fruit trees, lots of outbuildings, and it all looked a touch neglected, on the brink of dilapidation. The reason for this was that our landlords were entirely without means. The husband, Mr Sponar, in his seventies, with a smooth, chiselled actor's face and snow-white hair, always wore velvet jackets and little loose, flapping cravats, and fancied himself a bit of an artist. He certainly had an artist's lack of business acumen. He had owned a small factory in Berlin, where they manufactured alabaster shells to his own designs in a range of attractive soft colours, intended for use as lampshades. At one time the factory had been doing very well, when these alabaster lampshades were all the rage, but then people's taste turned to other kinds of lamps. Sponar had doggedly defied this shift in taste, continuing to produce his beloved alabaster shells to his own designs. He had sunk all his savings into this pointless protest, mortgaging his house on the Spree down to the last roof tile. And then the economic collapse had come, before alabaster lampshades were back in fashion again. When you heard the seventy-year-old talk about this, his dark eyes flamed beneath his white hair; he still believed in the enduring appeal of alabaster lampshades, as others believe in the second coming of the Messiah. ‘I shall live to see the day when everyone will be buying alabaster shades again!' went up the cry. ‘This present fashion for parchment lampshades, paper lampshades even – what on earth is that? It shows a complete lack of taste. Firstly, an alabaster shade gives out a soft light that can be tinted to any colour you like, and secondly . . .' And he would launch into a lengthy excursus on the advantages of the lamps made by him. Mrs Sponar, his espoused wife, had something of the dethroned queen about her, an air of Mary Queen of Scots in the hour before her execution. Her hair too was snowy-white, crowning a face that was white and almost wrinklefree, there was something Junoesque about her figure, and she had what one might call an ample bosom – which she knew how to carry off. It was not hard to tell who wore the trousers in that marriage. The retired artist obeyed the dethroned queen in all matters without question. I rather doubt if it had always been this way. This undoubtedly clever, or at least wily, woman would surely not have allowed her husband to
ruin himself so foolishly while she stood idly by. I imagine he did it all behind her back, and only when she discovered the full extent of his business failure did she seize the reins of government. But it was too late. They had become impoverished – worse than that: they were on welfare. The rent that I paid them – and it was no small amount – all went to the mortgage lenders, who were happy to get a little interest at last on the money they had lent. In the meantime the Sponars were living off the meagre pension that the social services paid them during those lean years, which probably amounted to something like thirty marks a month – that's for husband and wife together, of course! As the saying goes: not enough to live on, too much to die for. Things were made easier for them, of course, in that they were still living in ‘their' own house and could feed themselves from ‘their' own garden. In other times, needless to say, the mortgage lenders would have long since lost patience and forced them to put the house up for auction; but in order to prevent total chaos in the property market one of the previous governments had introduced something called ‘foreclosure protection', which meant that a foreclosure could only be initiated if the borrower gave his consent, which of course happened only in very rare instances.